


Wonder, Wander, Want

by seekingsquake



Series: we were young and wild and free [3]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, M/M, Post canon, brief anxiety attack, sad!drunk JJ
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-04
Updated: 2017-06-04
Packaged: 2018-11-09 01:43:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11094285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekingsquake/pseuds/seekingsquake
Summary: He expects Otabek only to go for a moment, but the seconds tick away long enough that Yuri sits up and stares at the bedroom door, straining to listen for any noise. And then, unexpectedly, he hears voices in the living room. Voices, plural. He crawls out of bed and makes his way into the hall to investigate, and what he sees is so strange that he figures it must be a dream. He presses his fists into his eyes and rubs, then blinks a few times rapidly, and finally says, “Beka. I must be having a nightmare. Jean-Jackass Leroy is on the couch.”“Yuri,” Otabek says, and his tone is caught somewhere between being dark with warning and soft with confusion.“Awe, someone’s grumpy,” JJ coos and the artificial sweetness of his voice gets Yuri grinding his teeth.“What the fuck is going on here?”“JJ came to visit,” Otabek states, almost as if this isn’t the weirdest, most unexpected thing that’s happened to them.“Surprise!” JJ says, and Yuri wants to hit him.





	Wonder, Wander, Want

**Author's Note:**

> A huge thank you to imagines for helping me stay on track as I went along, listening to me ramble, and being so enthusiastic about this piece even when I was frustrated and uncertain. Also for catching spelling mistakes when both I and the computer missed them! If there are any spelling or grammatical errors left, I'm blaming Google Docs and Grammarly. 
> 
> If I'm missing any tags you think are necessary, please let me know and I'll add them in.

It’s been a long week for both of them, so Yuri’s been looking forward to this night in, just the two of them, for days. Yuri’s got Otabek spread out across the mattress, his shirt tossed to the floor and the only light coming from the lamp on the bedside table. Otabek groans as Yuri digs the heels of his palms into the meat of Otabek’s shoulders, and they both shiver. Otabek is putty under his hands, relaxed and pliant. It almost gives Yuri a headrush, knowing that only he gets to have Otabek like this. Otabek makes a soft sound in the back of his throat that usually indicates he’s about to fall asleep, and Yuri smiles. Everything is perfect, exactly the way that Yuri wanted it, and then Otabek’s phone rings.

 

“Leave it,” Yuri murmurs, leaning over Otabek’s back and kissing the back of his neck. “If it’s important they’ll leave a message.”

 

Otabek snuffles then arches up against Yuri and sighs. “What if it’s work though?”

 

“You can call them back tomorrow, tell them you didn’t have your phone or something. Just stay home with me tonight.”

 

They pause there for a moment, silently assessing each other, and then Otabek’s body melts back into the bed. He presses his face into the pillow, then reaches back and snags Yuri’s arm, dragging him down to lay beside him. Yuri almost falls asleep himself when Otabek’s phone goes off again, and they both grumble. Otabek flings his hand out and snags it off the top of the bedside table, then shoves it into the drawer. There’s silence in the apartment for two blessed minutes, and then an insistent banging on the front door.

 

“What the fuck‽” Yuri shouts, grabbing the pillow and burying his head underneath it, and tangling his fingers in the waistband of Otabek’s shorts. “Fuck off!”

 

“Let me get up and tell them to go away,” Otabek rumbles, his fingers deftly detangling Yuri’s. “I’ll be right back.”

 

Yuri whines but lets Otabek go. He expects Otabek only to go for a moment, but the seconds tick away long enough that Yuri sits up and stares at the bedroom door, straining to listen for any noise. And then, unexpectedly, he hears voices in the living room. Voices, plural. He crawls out of bed and makes his way into the hall to investigate, and what he sees is so strange that he figures it must be a dream. He presses his fists into his eyes and rubs, then blinks a few times rapidly, and finally says, “Beka. I must be having a nightmare. Jean-Jackass Leroy is on the couch.”

 

“Yuri,” Otabek says, and his tone is caught somewhere between being dark with warning and soft with confusion.

 

“Awe, someone’s grumpy,” JJ coos and the artificial sweetness of his voice gets Yuri grinding his teeth.

 

“What the fuck is going on here?”

 

“JJ came to visit,” Otabek states, almost as if this isn’t the weirdest, most unexpected thing that’s happened to them.

 

“Surprise!” JJ says, and Yuri wants to hit him. Instead, he just grabs Otabek by the arm and drags him off into the kitchen.

 

“What the fuck is this?” Yuri hisses, indicating back out into the living room with a wildly accusing flick of his wrist. “Why is he here?”

 

Otabek sighs softly, his brow furrowed. “I think,” he murmurs, keeping his volume low as if he doesn’t want JJ to hear, “he’s having personal problems.”

 

Yuri snorts. Even if JJ hears them, he doesn’t speak Russian. To be contrary, Yuri nearly shouts, “So what? What does that have to do with us?”

 

“He doesn’t have any friends,” Otabek insists, and there’s a tension in him that’s foreign to Yuri. “I trained with him in Montréal for two years.”

 

_ “So what? _ It’s not like you’ve kept in contact with him since then. That’s fucking weird! Tell him to go away!” Yuri demands, but when Otabek doesn’t say anything, Yuri stares. “Oh my God. You’ve been speaking to him since then?”

 

“Not often,” Otabek admits quietly. “But I’d lived with his family for a while. His mother messages me over the holidays, and sometimes we text. It’s not a big deal. But if he’s here it’s because he has nowhere else to go. I can’t just turn him away, knowing that.”

 

“You don’t owe him anything,” Yuri mutters, turning away and opening the fridge to distract himself. “I don’t fucking want him here.”

 

“Yuri,” Otabek says, and he drags the syllables out in an attempt to be soothing. “I understand that. But Yura, you don’t live here.” Yuri freezes where he reaches for a jar of pickles, and he stiffens. Otabek continues, “You have a home to go back to if you don’t want to see him, but JJ doesn’t know any Russian, and he didn’t bring almost anything with him, and he’s here because he needs me, for whatever reason. I won’t turn him away just because you don’t like him.”

 

“Are you fucking for real right now?” Yuri snaps. “Out of everything we could be talking about, that’s what you want to get into?” But before anything else can be said, JJ’s there, lingering in the threshold of the kitchen. 

 

His eyes are tight, but he throws his head back in a laugh and pats Otabek maybe a little too hard on the shoulder. “It’s apparent that I’ve upset the princess,” he says, glancing at Yuri. Something is off about the way he says it though, and Yuri eyes him critically. “I’ll just be on my way. Sorry for bothering you, Otabek.” He has a soft guitar case strapped over his shoulder and a duffle bag, and he moves back into the hall and towards the front door.

 

“JJ,” Otabek calls, even as he maintains eye contact with Yuri, and Yuri huffs but concedes. He’s angry and confused as fuck, but even he can tell that JJ isn’t quite himself. “It’s fine. Please come sit.”

 

JJ hesitates by the door, his hand on the knob. He half turns towards the sound of Otabek’s voice, and there’s a tightness in his movements that Yuri pings as desperation. When they meet in competition, and when Yuri watches him on TV, JJ’s body is loose and his movements large and sweeping. It’s not a word he’d thought he’d ever use to describe his rival, but standing in the foyer, JJ is utterly contained. “I can fly home,” he says, and he keeps his eyes averted.

 

“You always run back to mommy whenever you don’t get what you want?” Yuri sneers, trying to get some balance back, some normalcy. They’ve never been kind to each other. If he plays out the verbal routine, maybe the rest won’t feel so off-kilter. “Otabek told you to go sit, so go sit. God, you’re so irritating.”

 

Finally, JJ looks Yuri in the eye, and they stare at each other for a moment that drags out into eternity. It ends when Otabek steps into JJ’s space and physically leads him back into the living room. He pushes JJ down onto the couch, and he leans over and rumbles something into JJ’s ear that Yuri can’t catch. JJ barks out a laugh that’s almost on the verge of hysterical, and then Yuri storms his way back into the bedroom to collect his things.

 

He can’t stay here tonight. He won’t. He’ll go back home to Lilia’s, and when he wakes up he’ll come back and maybe JJ will be gone and this whole thing will have been some fucky dream or something. He grabs his hoodie off the floor and makes sure he’s got his wallet and his keys, and when he looks up Otabek is standing in the doorway.

 

“I’m going home.”

 

“Yura.”

 

“Look. It’s whatever. I’ll see you later.” He goes to push by Otabek, but he’s caught by the crook of his elbow. Otabek’s hand is wide around his arm, and his grip is firm but always gentle.

 

“I don’t understand what’s happening here any more than you do,” Otabek murmurs, his eyes boring into Yuri’s. “But when I know, you’ll know. Please text me when you get home.”

 

Yuri wants to be angry, but it’s hard. He trusts Otabek. Even in the midst of all the strangeness, of any strangeness, he trusts Otabek. “I will. Goodnight.” He brushes a kiss briefly against Otabek’s mouth, and then Otabek releases him.

 

♔♔♔

 

“I’m sorry,” JJ says as soon as the door slams behind Yuri. “I tried calling.”

 

Otabek thinks about his phone going off in the bedroom earlier and sighs. “You were already here.”

 

“True!” JJ admits, but there’s a wild edge to him that Otabek remembers from back when they were teenagers, and Alain would scold him in front of his siblings and Otabek in the middle of the rink. A defiance and fear that makes him just a breath away from lashing out. “But I still tried.”

 

JJ is looking around him at the room, his eyes taking everything in in fleeting glances before finally lingering on Otabek. Otabek looks back at him. It’s been a long time since they’ve been alone anywhere together, most of a decade, and the silence stretches out uncomfortably between them. “What is this about?”

 

“No warm-up at all, hmm, Altin?”

 

“JJ, please.”

 

They continue to stare at each other, and then JJ folds in on himself. He sinks back into the couch, and he leans his head far back enough that he’s staring up at the ceiling. He wraps a hand loosely around his throat and rubs. He says, “I just needed to be away,” and his voice is steady but very quiet.

 

When they were fifteen, he and JJ were rink mates. When they were sixteen, Otabek moved into the Leroy family home after his homestay family dissolved. Now, when they are both twenty-five, it almost feels like those experiences didn’t happen; it’s almost like he remembers events from a movie that he’d watched years ago. The sound of JJ’s voice is different now, but his phrasing and pacing are the same. It’s familiar and foreign all at once. “Away from what?”

 

Otabek is surprised when JJ asks, “How did you know it was time to retire?”

 

Ah. Of course. When they were teenagers, JJ would often accidentally give more of himself away than he ever meant to. And you learn things about a person after you live with them for an extended period, things that you would never have learned otherwise. Otabek is privy to a number of JJ’s secrets, and they’ve spent the last seven or so years pretending that that isn’t the case. But Otabek got an inside view of the Leroy family dynamic, and even though it’s been years, it’s all starting to make sense. “You want to stop skating.”

 

“I don’t know,” JJ says. “I don’t know what I want. I’m just trying to work out what I need right now. But. That’s been difficult, too.”

 

“And Isabella?”

 

“She knows where I am. She’s fine with it. But I’d rather not talk about her. We need to figure out the skating first.”

 

_ We  _ because JJ has never decided anything on his own before, no matter how important, and  _ first  _ because JJ will want to talk about Isabella later, Otabek knows.  _ First  _ because the ice has always been the most important thing to the Leroys, and his parents have never stepped away from it, but. Otabek has always known that JJ’s motivations were different than Alain’s. JJ’s always been an inconsistent skater. Some years he’s kept everyone on their toes and been a beast on the ice, dominating every rink he set foot on. And some years every time he skated he looked like he was just barely holding on, and he fell more than he didn’t, and each podium was like a gift. Only love keeps you moving through that sort of whiplash. For Otabek and Yuri, for Victor, for Alain, it has always been a love of the ice that kept them coming back, even when it didn’t feel good. Love of the sport.

 

When Otabek lived in the Leroy household, he learned something that surprised and worried him right down to his very core.

 

For JJ, it was always about love for his family.

 

“Otabek,” JJ says, and it’s a demand and a plea all at once. “How did you know it was time?”

 

Otabek cannot say anything. He knew when the fire to win didn’t shine as brightly within him as it used to. He knew when he started to prefer to watch the others than to try and match them. He knew when he felt his body growing tired and his mind wandering to other things. These things will mostly not apply to JJ. 

 

The silence stretches on until JJ speaks again. He sort of chuckles and he rubs his throat, as if encouraging the words to come out, and he whispers, “I’m afraid.”

 

Otabek doesn’t know what to say, and so he continues to say nothing at all.

 

♔♔♔

 

Otabek never sleeps too well on the nights that Yuri doesn’t spend with him, which is why he usually books himself at clubs when he knows that Yuri won’t be sleeping over. JJ’s presence chasing Yuri out was an unexpected change in routine, and when Otabek walks into the living room after a few hours of tossing and turning to find JJ already awake, he grinds his teeth.

 

“I made coffee,” JJ tells him, his voice gravelly with exhaustion.

 

“Why didn’t you rest?”

 

JJ’s still dressed in the clothes he showed up in the evening before. His duffle bag is underneath the coffee table, still zipped up. There is nothing in the living room that wasn’t there before, indicating that JJ has not unpacked any of his things. There’s a blanket folded at the end of the couch that is precisely as Otabek had left it the night before. It looks like JJ just sat there all night. JJ stares at Otabek as if he doesn’t understand, and Otabek checks himself. He probably asked in Russian out of habit. The first person he speaks to on any given day is Yuri, and they don’t often speak English in the house.

 

Otabek shuffles into the kitchen. The coffee pot is full. “JJ why didn’t you sleep? Why didn’t you have coffee?”

 

From the couch, JJ sort of chuckles. “Mama’s got me on a no caffeine kick.”

 

There’s a bowl of fruit on the counter, and yoghurt in the fridge, and protein bars in the cabinet. “You need to eat something.” 

 

“I’d like to go for a run,” JJ says instead, uncharacteristically hesitant.

 

“Do you need me to go with you?”

 

JJ appears in the kitchen. He’s taller than Otabek, but he always had been. Now though, he seems... smaller. He leans against the counter with his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes closed. Now that Otabek is closer to him, it looks like JJ hasn’t slept in a long time. “I’m sorry I chased your boyfriend away.”

 

“JJ...”

 

“I should go for my run before he gets back, so he doesn’t have to see me.” He laughs. “He is coming back, right?”

 

“He is,” Otabek admits. “But you’ll get lost if you go alone.”

 

JJ tosses his head back and laughs again. It’s too loud, too boisterous. If it were a media sound byte or a phone conversation, Otabek would be able to believe that it’s genuine. But he can’t believe it when JJ is standing right beside him. “That’s nothing new,” he says as he pushes away from the counter and back into the living room. “I have your address. I’ll use GPS to get back. Are you busy today? If it turns out that I’m actually fucking incompetent, I’ll call you.”

 

Otabek watches as JJ takes his bag into the bathroom, and when he reemerges, he’s in track pants and a Team Canada jacket. “See ya later!” he says as he zips out the front door. Otabek sighs.

 

♔♔♔

 

When Yuri lets himself in, the apartment is quiet. The kitchen is empty, and the living room is empty, so he moves to the bedroom and finds Otabek lying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. Yuri watches him for a moment before joining him, carefully crawling up onto the bed and curling up against Otabek’s chest. “Did he leave?”

 

“Just for a run.”

 

“Oh.”

 

Otabek wraps his arm around Yuri and pulls him closer, then sighs heavily. Yuri keeps watching him. “If him being here is going to stress you out we can find him a hotel,” Yuri murmurs, cupping Otabek’s face in his hand and turning it so that Otabek is looking at him. 

 

Instead of answering, Otabek just drops a kiss on Yuri’s brow. “The sooner I help him through this, the sooner he can go home,” he murmurs. “If you can, please be gentle with him.”

 

“Why did he even come here?”

 

“They’re not my secrets to tell.”

 

“Beka.”

 

Otabek presses his lips together in a tight line, then sighs again. “I think he wants to retire.”

 

The statement sits like a weight between them, and then Yuri sits up quickly. “What?” His eyes are wide with disbelief. “Can he even do that?”

 

Otabek tilts his head, and his brow furrows. “Everyone retires eventually.”

 

“Yeah, but...” 

 

“But?”

 

“Just. I mean. His dad only retired after he busted his knee, right? And his mom retired to have kids. JJ can still skate. And it’s not like he’s super old or anything; Victor and Georgi both—”

 

“I stopped before I had to,” Otabek interrupts gently. “Not everyone pushes until they can’t anymore.”

 

“Yeah,” Yuri admits softly, his fingers tangling in Otabek’s hair. “But you were on top of the world when you retired. You won everything important that season.” He kisses Otabek greedily as if talking about Otabek kicking ass competitively gets him hot under the collar. “JJ still has shit to prove. Can he just stop like that? For no reason?”

 

Otabek knows that these are some of the same thoughts that JJ is having about himself. But Otabek also knows that JJ is an adult that can do whatever he wants and that he doesn’t owe the skating community any more medals or any career-ending injuries. He tells Yuri, “He can stop whenever he wants to,” and pulls Yuri back down to lay beside him.

 

“If he wants to, then why all this?”

 

It’s complicated in a way that it never will be for Yuri. Everyone knows that Yuri will skate and win until his body doesn’t let him anymore. And he’ll be angry when he has to stop, but he’ll probably do what Victor did and move to coaching, and never leave the ice. And the decision to retire was easy for Otabek because he knew he was ready, but he understands the pressure that JJ must be feeling. He says, “I’m the only person he knows who chose to retire. He just needs to see that it’s okay.”

 

“He isn’t you though,” Yuri murmurs, pressing his face into Otabek’s neck. “And his life isn’t like yours. He’ll argue you for the sake of it.”

 

JJ has never been good at asking for help. He has always just taken what he needed and hoped that no one noticed. His coming here like this, this is as close to a scream as Otabek has ever heard from him. People will notice. “I don’t think he will. He’s very upset. You don’t know him that well but—”

 

“And you do?”

 

“What?”

 

“You know him that well?” Yuri whispers, looking up at him through lowered lashes. “Even though you haven’t been rink mates since you were seventeen, and you don’t talk much or often, you know him that well?”

 

And it’s ridiculous when phrased like that, but. “I’m afraid I might,” Otabek admits quietly. “Or that he thinks I do.”

 

To have a family that loves him, and a fiancee that he’s been with for ten years, and to still need to fly overseas because someone you text about once a year is the only person in the world you feel safe enough to admit these types of things to... Otabek feels terribly sad. Yuri presses their foreheads together and sighs softly. 

 

♔♔♔

 

It’s late afternoon when Yuri leaves the bedroom with the intention finding some food, but he pauses at the mouth of the hallway when he sees JJ on the couch. Neither he nor Otabek had heard JJ come back from his run. JJ’s got a laptop set up on the coffee table, and he’s speaking softly in French. A woman’s voice says something that sounds subdued, and JJ presses the heel of his hand into his brow. In English, he says, “I don’t want to discuss it.”

 

The woman says something else in French that sounds sharp to Yuri’s ears, and then she says, also in English, softer, “I love you, Jayje.”

 

“Yeah,” JJ says, and it feels tired, and he closes the lid of the laptop. When he finally looks up, he catches Yuri lurking.

 

Immediately it’s awkward. Yuri steps into the kitchen and bangs around in the cupboards louder than necessary, and he can feel JJ’s eyes on him, but he doesn’t know if he wants to engage. No, he knows he doesn’t want to, but can’t decide whether or not if he  _ should.  _ Otabek told him to be gentle. Otabek implied that JJ has no one in the whole world that would be better equipped to handle this situation. “Do you want something to drink?”

 

JJ makes a sound that is perplexed, and when Yuri turns around JJ’s eyebrow is quirked. “What?”

 

“Do you want. Something to drink.”

 

They stare at each other for a moment before JJ finally says, “No. Thank you.”

 

Yuri pours himself a glass of water and grabs a banana and an apple out of the fruit bowl. “Was that your girlfriend?” he asks, nodding at the laptop.

 

“Hm? Oh. Uh. Yeah.”

 

The crisp crunch noise when Yuri bites down on the apple is too loud between them, and JJ almost flinches at the sound, but schools himself. The discomfort in both of them is palpable. After a handful of awkward seconds roll past, JJ speaks up again. “She’s really great.”

 

The comment feels disjointed and half-hearted, and Yuri is on edge. Victor and Yuuri would never sound like that when talking about each other, and even though he and Otabek are generally more reserved, he can’t imagine himself sounding so lacklustre when speaking of his boyfriend. “Hm.”

 

No, Yuri can’t do this. He beats a hasty retreat back towards the bedroom, but he only gets about halfway there before JJ stops him. “Plisetsky,” he says, and it feels... urgent. “You’re really lucky, you know?”

 

Yuri turns to look at him, really look at him, and his heart thuds painfully in his chest. JJ looks all but hollowed out. Everything about him feels rumpled. Yuri tries to think back to the last time they skated against each other; it can’t have been too long ago, but he struggles to come up with any images.

 

“With Otabek,” JJ clarifies, then clears his throat. “He’s a great guy. You’re lucky to have him.”

 

“I know.” He can’t let his weird-ass conversation continue, so he darts the rest of the way down the hall and nearly slams the bedroom door behind him.

 

Otabek looks up from the book he was reading and eyes Yuri with concern. “Is everything okay?”

 

“Yeah,” Yuri says. He chucks the banana at Otabek, and it bounces on the bed a little before coming to a stop against Otabek’s thigh. Then Yuri crawls up onto the mattress and crunches down on his apple. “Fuck.”

 

“What is it?”

 

“I left my water in the kitchen.”

 

Otabek’s lip twitches just slightly upward, and his eyes are warm. He leans his head against Yuri’s arm. “Then go get it.”

 

Yuri thinks of JJ, an ominous, gaping hole festering on the couch in the living room, and the silence that stretched out between when Isabella said  _ I love you  _ and JJ only said  _ yeah.  _ He can’t go back out there. Not alone. He can’t stagger through another conversation like that. He says, “It’s no big deal,” and he curls closer to Otabek, and he takes a steady breath.

 

Otabek lets the book fall over the edge of the bed as he rolls them both onto their sides and wraps Yuri up in a warm hug. 

 

♔♔♔

 

“You brought the guitar,” Otabek says over dinner. JJ’s sitting on the couch and leaning over the coffee table, Otabek is on the other end of the sofa with his plate in his lap, and Yuri is begrudgingly sitting between them, on the floor. “But you haven’t played it yet.”

 

JJ glances over Yuri’s head at Otabek and puts his fork down. “I haven’t even been here twenty-four hours. You want me to play something?”

 

“You don’t cook, you don’t clean,” Otabek almost mutters, and Yuri looks up at him, bewildered. But Otabek’s head is tilted toward JJ, and his eyes are soft at the corners. He’s joking. Yuri presses his lips together. “You might as well entertain us.”

 

JJ only laughs. “God, have you gone through the last years of your life sounding like my mother? Out of all the things you could have picked up from Montréal. I’m sorry Plisetsky.” Before Yuri can even process what’s just happened, JJ twists around and grabs his guitar from where he’d left it propped up against the couch. He spends a little time tuning it, and then he strums a couple of chords, and then he starts to sing.

 

_ “And well I think I’ve gone mad. Isn’t that so sad? And what a shame, you’ve lost a brain that you’ve never had.” _

 

It’s not a song that Yuri recognises, but immediately Otabek sputters out a laugh. “JJ, no.”

 

_ “Oh mum check the car, it can’t have gone far, I must have left it on a train or lost it in a bar.” _

 

Yuri doesn’t play any instruments. He has an appreciation of music in regards to the fact that it’s vital to his profession, and he  _ likes  _ music well enough, but over time he’s mostly started only really listening to whatever Otabek shows him. JJ grows bored of whatever it is that he’s playing and switches songs part way through to something else that Yuri doesn’t know but that Otabek does, and Yuri feels off kilter, like the floor has tilted and he’s slipping.

 

Yuri has orbited around Otabek since Yuri was fifteen. And Otabek has orbited around him in return, and they circle each other so tightly that sometimes it feels like there’s no room for anyone else. But Otabek had had eighteen years of life, filled with other people before Yuri became someone tangible to him, and it’s easy for Yuri to forget that. 

 

JJ thrusts the guitar into Otabek’s hands, and Otabek laughs. “No, no, I haven’t played in years, I wouldn’t even know—”

 

“It’s like riding a bicycle,” JJ insists, and he leans across the couch to adjust Otabek’s fingers over the frets.

 

Yuri wraps a hand tightly around Otabek’s ankle. He didn’t even know Otabek could play the guitar, and they’ve spent seven years focused on each other. Yuri had figured that he knew everything there was to know. And yet...

 

“Play Plisetsky a song,” JJ wheedles, and Otabek snorts before strumming half-heartedly. 

 

“I play Yuri songs all the time,” Otabek says. “Just. Usually through headphones.”

 

“Or in clubs,” Yuri adds, his fingertips dipping into Otabek’s sock. Otabek passes the guitar back to JJ, and then he tangles his fingers into Yuri’s hair. Yuri watches JJ watch them, and his eyes are blank even though his mouth is pulled into a smile. It makes Yuri’s stomach twist with discomfort, so he turns his gaze to Otabek instead. Otabek smiles mostly with his eyes and his brow line, and he looks happy, and Yuri uses that to ground himself.

 

JJ has gone so quiet that Yuri can almost pretend he isn’t there at all.

 

♔♔♔

 

Yuri is showering, and Otabek is puttering around the kitchen, but JJ is just lying on the couch and staring up at the ceiling as if he’d never seen anything else in his life. “You know,” Otabek says as he brings two cups of coffee into the living room. He puts one down on the coffee table, as close to JJ’s head as he can, and then he stands there and takes a sip of his own. “You could go to the rink with Yuri.”

 

JJ’s eyes flicker to Otabek, and he rubs at his throat. He doesn’t say anything.

 

“We could all go,” Otabek tries again. “Or we could go to the open skate in the evening.”

 

Otabek hears the shower shut off, and then the bathroom door opens. Footsteps down the hall tell Otabek that Yuri’s gone to get dressed. JJ hms softly, then says, “I should at least attempt to keep up my training, shouldn’t I? Since I haven’t decided if I’ll compete yet or not. There’s some choreography I could work on.”

 

There’s no outward manifestation of reluctance, and Otabek can tell that JJ doesn’t have anything else he’d rather do with his day, but there’s still the feeling of a distinct lack of interest in going to the rink. Like even shocking his own system by suddenly leaving his country wasn’t enough to really pull his brain from the fog of routine. Why go to the rink? He doesn’t want to skate. But why not? JJ has never wanted anything except approval. He gets a tremendous amount of approval from even strangers when he’s on the ice. Where else would he go instead? 

 

Footsteps in the hall again, then the bathroom door clicking shut, then the roar of the blow dryer. A regular Tuesday morning. Except—

 

JJ pulls his phone out of the pocket of his track pants. He presses the home button, and the screen illuminates his face. He looks sickly pale in the white glow. It’s early enough that the world around them is still dark past the windows. In the kitchen, the light above the stove is on, and there’s light from the bedroom spilling out into the hall. When Yuri wakes, he wakes everything around him step by step. He hasn’t yet ventured out here, though. The phone screen goes dark, and JJ lets the device fall to his chest. He murmurs, “Isabella is probably getting ready for bed now.”

 

The bathroom door opens again, and Yuri breezes into the kitchen. He flicks on all the lights around him. JJ flinches. Otabek turns away, towards where Yuri is eating yoghurt right out of the large plastic tub. “Yura,” he murmurs before he can stop himself, impossibly fond and just a touch exasperated. Yuri tilts his cheek, and Otabek steps into his space and kisses it. He lingers there, basking in Yuri’s skin until his body remembers that there’s someone else in the living room. He takes a step back. “Stop eating out of the carton. Use a bowl like an adult.”

 

Yuri sticks his tongue out around the spoon still in his mouth. Otabek is so in love with him.

 

In the living room, JJ’s phone rings and it startles both Yuri and Otabek. They glance at each other before each shuffling a little closer to the threshold of the room.

 

The phone rings and rings and JJ is speaking English when he finally answers it. He skips a greeting. “I told you to stay focused while I was gone, why are you calling? You should be sleeping by now.” There’s a pause where the other half of the conversation would be if the other person were in the room, and then JJ says, “Arthur,” and Yuri’s eyes flicker with recognition.

 

Arthur Leroy, the youngest Leroy child, is nineteen years old. Due only to circumstance Otabek never competed against him, but Yuri has been meeting Arthur on the rink in the past couple of seasons almost as much as he’s been meeting JJ. He’s a more consistent skater than his brother, and he always manages to wow the audience in ways that almost make Otabek think of Victor. Even so, Otabek can remember when Arthur was nine years old and still so clumsy that Nathalie had once said, “If only two out of three of my children become skaters, that is not so bad as long as he is happy.”

 

Yuri doesn’t like Arthur anymore than he likes JJ, but that’s only because Arthur is young and sweet and looks at him with eyes the size of little moons whenever they are in the same room.

 

Arthur used to look at JJ like that when they were all younger and smaller. The first time JJ did a quad in practice, Otabek had watched him and thought  _ time to pick up the pace, Altin _ but Arthur had screamed from the boards, “You’re king of the ice, JJ!” Otabek wonders if either of them remembers that that’s where the nickname came from. King JJ. Otabek wonders if Arthur still looks up to his brother like that, with moons for eyes.

 

“Fuck off,” JJ murmurs, and he laughs a little, and then he sighs. Otabek peers out into the living room to see JJ sitting up, with his hand wrapped around his throat and his face twisted into a grimace. “I’ll call her later. How’s mama?”

 

Yuri drops his spoon in the sink and pops the lid back on the yoghurt before putting it back in the fridge. “You’ve got your thinking face on,” he says casually as he prepares himself a water bottle.

 

Otabek shakes his head. “I’m trying to come up with things for him to do, but—”

 

JJ stands up rather suddenly, and the movement draws everyone’s attention. He looks ruined. His phone is nowhere to be seen. “I don’t want to go to the rink,” he snarls, and Otabek can feel Yuri’s unease beside him.

 

“Okay,” Otabek agrees easily. “What would you like to do?”

 

“I’m going for a run.” Then JJ grabs his duffle bag from under the coffee table and takes all his things into the bathroom. The door clicking closed feels very final, like the end of the whole interaction, but the additional click of the lock is jarring. Otabek and Yuri look at each other, and Yuri shrugs, but Otabek can’t help but feel like he’s standing on the other side of a glass wall, watching a stranger wasting away and listening to a million voices telling him that that person is a friend. 

 

It’s rather unsettling. 

 

♔♔♔

 

When Yuri gets back to the apartment after training, Otabek has gone out, but JJ is still around. He knows this because JJ is playing the guitar and singing to himself, and Yuri stays just out of sight in the foyer to listen. 

 

“ _ Am I just like the rest of them? The sum of my father and all his sins; I didn’t need an answer oh, say nothing at all. You said it all.” _

 

Yuri knew that sporadically throughout his skating career, JJ’s gone on tour with a band or something. He must have known then, logically, that JJ was capable of at least something musically, but. Yuri always had mostly kind of assumed that JJ used his family’s fame to fulfil any and all of his outlandish desires. But JJ’s voice sounds pleasant and interesting, and he seems to know how to work his way around a guitar, so maybe JJ spends time with that band because he’s actually, like, okay or something.

 

And then Yuri thinks of  _ Theme of King JJ _ and shudders. Whoever wrote that piece of shit needs to be slapped.

 

_ “You didn’t need that explanation, and I had no expectations; I don’t wanna talk, no I don’t wanna talk.” _

 

“Did you write that?” Yuri asks after it’s clear the JJ’s finished the song and JJ’s body jerks with surprise. He looks at Yuri as if he’s afraid of being chewed out, and then like he’s daring Yuri to chew him out, and then his eyes shutter and everything seems to drain out of him.

 

“No,” JJ answers. “I just like it, so I learned it.”

 

“What’s it about?”

 

JJ looks surprised that Yuri’s asking, and Yuri’s surprised at himself, but. Yuri doesn’t want to go home tonight, and Otabek isn’t here yet. He might as well try to be nice, or whatever. “I think... I think it’s about people who are experiencing changes in their relationship that they don’t want to talk about.”

 

“Like a breakup?”

 

“Maybe. But. I don’t know. The song is called  _ Best Places to Be a Mom.” _

 

The conversation stops there because Yuri doesn’t know where to take it next and, though it’s been unexpected considering all of their interactions in the past, JJ hasn’t been too sociable since he’s been here. Yuri kicks off his shoes finally and drops his bag on the floor, then meanders into the kitchen. “Did you have lunch yet?”

 

“No.”

 

Yuri thinks about how quickly JJ took off this morning and asks, “Did you eat breakfast?”

 

JJ’s silence is telling.

 

“You’re a fucking idiot,” Yuri snaps. “You can’t not eat just ‘cause you’re sad or whatever, Jesus.”

 

JJ laughs. “I just forgot, it’s not a big deal.” He comes into the room and leans against the counter by Yuri’s hip, and he watches as Yuri starts putting together a couple of sandwiches. “And anyway, I’m not sad.” Yuri levels JJ with a scowl, but JJ just laughs again and kind of flaps his hands. “I’m not! What could I possibly have to be sad about?”

 

“Your sorry excuse for a face, for one,” Yuri mutters before wincing.  _ Be nice, Yura.  _ His inner voice sounds a lot like Otabek. He shoves a piece of ham in his mouth before he can put his foot there, then says before he finishes swallowing, “Otabek told me you’re thinking of quitting.”

 

When JJ is still, it’s like the air around him is also still. His muscles all visibly tense in his face and his shoulders, and Yuri has to really focus to figure out whether JJ is even still breathing. He is, but it’s extremely controlled. And then JJ shrugs, and it’s almost normal, almost casual, but the smile he’s forced his mouth into is nearly grotesque. Yuri feels sick looking at him, so he turns his attention resolutely back to the assembly of lunch. “We can’t all have the stamina and determination of you Russians,” JJ chirps, and Yuri’s startled by how  _ JJ  _ it sounds. He knows that JJ is fucking falling apart. He got up in the night to go to the bathroom, and JJ had been just standing in the middle of the living room, humming listlessly to himself and fiddling with his phone. He came unannounced to Russia near the very end of the off-season with no explanation for anyone. He only leaves the apartment to go on runs, and he only goes on runs when he doesn’t want Yuri or Otabek to look at him. Yuri knows that JJ isn’t okay. But when he isn’t looking at JJ, when he only hears the bullshit that comes out of JJ’s mouth and doesn’t focus on the rest of it, JJ sounds completely normal.

 

He wonders, if at all those competitions over the years where he heard JJ’s loud, booming voice at his back, if he had just turned around, even for a second, if he would have seen any of this. He wonders if JJ functions in the public eye knowing that even when people are looking at him, they’re not really  _ looking  _ at him. They’re looking at pieces of him. 

 

Yuri can recall Lilia once commenting on the fact that the older he gets, the more JJ looks like Alain.  _ Am I just like the rest of them? The sum of my father— _ Yuri wonders how many people don’t even see JJ at all.

 

“What, you’re getting tired already? Skating for only eighteen years and already feeling it in your knees?”

 

“Try skating for twenty-five years,” JJ jokes, and he pilfers a piece of cheese right off the still open face of Yuri’s sandwich. “I think I learned to skate before I learned to walk.”

 

Yuri replaces the cheese JJ stole, then pops on the top piece of bread and cuts the whole thing in half. He starts on a second sandwich, laying out the bread carefully.

 

“My parents have this picture up in their living room,” JJ admits, and his eyes are closed, and his hand is around his own throat. “We must be at a pond or something. It’s winter. My dad is pushing Amalie over the ice in a buggy, and I’m tethered to his belt with a dog leash or something.” JJ chuckles. “He was just, like, dragging me behind him. And in the picture, I’m mid-fall. But he looks so proud.”

 

“He wouldn’t be proud of you if you stopped skating?”

 

When JJ opens his eyes, he’s staring off into space. Yuri doesn’t look at him. Can’t. “Sure he would,” JJ murmurs. “He loves me.” But there’s an edge in his voice that’s got Yuri grinding his teeth. 

 

Uncertainty.

 

“Here,” Yuri says, nudging one of the sandwiches in JJ’s direction. “You better fucking eat this before Otabek gets back, or he’ll nag you.”

 

JJ laughs, and Yuri doesn’t look at him, and they both pretend like everything’s okay.

 

♔♔♔

 

Otabek watches Yuri get ready to go out in the reflection of the vanity mirror from the edge of the bed. “I know you’re tired,” he murmurs, and Yuri’s hand stutters a little where he’s trying to secure his hair into a bun. “You don’t have to come with me.”

 

“I want to,” Yuri answers sternly, making eye contact with Otabek through the mirror. “I’ve already picked an outfit and everything.”

 

They smile at each other, and Otabek stands up to leave Yuri to finish getting ready. He moves into the living room to grab his gear, and he finds JJ curled up on the couch, wrapped up in a blanket and staring intently at the floor. His brow is furrowed and his jaw is tight, but his eyes are blank and foggy. Otabek stares for a moment, and then he sits on the couch by JJ’s feet. “Hey,” he says softly, not wanting to startle JJ, but JJ doesn’t react. “JJ, hey.”

 

Eventually JJ shifts, and then he’s curled up even tighter so that he can look at Otabek out of the corner of his eye. He doesn’t speak, and his eyes are still empty, but he’s at least focusing.

 

“I’m going to work,” Otabek tells him quietly, his hand resting on JJ’s blanket-covered leg, “and Yuri’s going to come dancing since he’s got an off day tomorrow. Do you want to come to the club?”

 

JJ just looks at him, and Otabek is about to prod him gently again just to make sure that he understood, but then Yuri comes into the room. He takes in the scene quickly, nods tightly at Otabek, and then stomps across the room and rips the blanket off of JJ with a dramatic flourish. “Get up.” JJ transfers his gaze to Yuri but still doesn’t say anything. “Get up,” Yuri tells him again, forcefully. “Get dressed. You’re coming with us. A taxi will be here in fifteen minutes. If you’re not ready, you’re going to be out in your underwear. Don’t think I won’t bully you into that car because I will.”

 

JJ and Otabek make eye contact again, and Otabek just kind of smiles, and JJ sighs deeply before gathering himself enough to stand. He’s wearing boxer shorts and a pair of tiny athletic socks and nothing else. He leans down to grab his duffle bag, and he shuffles off to the bathroom, and both Yuri and Otabek watch him go.

 

“I hate him,” Yuri mutters.

 

Otabek grabs him around the waist and pulls him into his lap. He kisses Yuri’s shoulder, and then up the side of his neck, and he murmurs, “You’re warming up to him, don’t lie.”

 

Yuri grumbles but doesn’t quite deny it. He reaches back and tangles his fingers in Otabek’s hair, and leans more of his weight against Otabek’s chest. “I know it’s not easy for you,” he murmurs, “And I know I’m a brat about it sometimes, but. You heart is so kind, and I love you so much.”

 

Otabek sort of freezes, and then his arms are tight around Yuri and the hug is fierce. “Yura.”

 

JJ reemerges, dressed and tired looking. His hair is wet, and when he looks at the couple on the couch, Yuri practically slithers out of Otabek’s lap. Otabek’s arms feel empty when he goes, but he doesn’t try to hold on. When he looks at JJ, JJ has already turned away. His back is stiff as he sweeps into the kitchen, and his silence is almost stifling in its intensity. Otabek glances at Yuri, and Yuri shrugs. “JJ.”

 

“Let’s go,” JJ mutters, and immediately Otabek wonders if this was a mistake. But it’s too late now, so they go wait for the taxi outside.

 

♔♔♔

 

It was a mistake. Otabek goes to the DJ booth with a parting kiss and  _ please keep an eye on him  _ whispered in Yuri’s ear, but JJ’s already disappeared into the crowd when Yuri turns back around. It takes Yuri an hour to find him, and when he finally does JJ has already had too much to drink, and girls are clinging to him as he buys rounds of shots. One of the girls tilts JJ’s face into hers and tries to plant a kiss on him, but then he spots Yuri and practically dumps all the girls to the floor in his haste to get to the only person he sees that he actually knows.

 

“Do you want a shot?” he slurs, and Yuri wants to slap him.

 

“No. Come here. Follow me.” He snags JJ by the hem of his shirt and drags him to the bathroom. He wets some paper towel and presses it into JJ”s hands. “Cool down a little, idiot.”

 

JJ presses the wet paper to his face and laughs, and it sounds like bullets against concrete. “I don’t even know what I’m drinking.”

 

“You shouldn’t have gone off on your own.”   
  


“Yeah,” JJ agrees, and his eyes are red when he finally looks at Yuri again. “It’s just that sometimes when I look at you I get so jealous that it makes my skin crawl.”

 

“Wait,” Yuri sputters, taken aback. “What?” 

 

“You have everything, don’t you know that?”

 

Yuri stares at him incredulously. “We have all the same things, JJ.”

 

JJ tosses his head back, laughing that laugh that used to grind on Yuri’s nerves but now just makes Yuri feel like something bad is happening and Yuri can’t figure out what it is. “You can think that all you want,” JJ sighs, smiling indulgently, “but you’re wrong. Let’s drink!”

 

♔♔♔

 

_ “And I came to get hurt!”  _ JJ sings at the top of his lungs, his words slurring together.  _ “Might as well do your worst to me.”  _ He’s got an arm draped over Otabek, and Yuri is on the stairs ahead of them, opening all the doors. Otabek manoeuvers JJ up the stairs and through the building. It’s a challenge.

 

“We should have left him here,” Yuri mutters, and then winces when JJ lists heavily to the left and catches his shoulder hard on the doorframe Otabek is trying to push him through.

 

“Well, now we know for next time.”

 

_ “Think I’m gonna move to Californiaaaaaaaa.” _

 

“We should have known for  _ this  _ time,” Yuri grumbles, but runs ahead to unlock the apartment door anyway. Otabek has never seen JJ this drunk before. But this state that JJ’s in is more than just drunkenness. It’s so obviously sad that Otabek doesn’t really know what to do with it. JJ keeps singing, but he switches to French, and then he laughs so hard he almost collapses. Yuri swings the apartment door open, Otabek hauls JJ inside, and JJ drags them both down to the floor.

 

His arm is around Otabek’s neck, and he presses his face into Otabek’s hair, and he keeps singing.

 

“Do you even know what he’s saying?” Yuri spits as he steps into the apartment and over their legs, kicking off his shoes and hanging his jacket.

 

“Bonne fête à toi.” Otabek answers. “Happy Birthday.”

 

“Who’s fucking birthday is it?”

 

“Isabellaaaaaaa,” JJ warbles, and Yuri stares hard at him.  _ “Isabella, Isabella, I heard you crying through the walls. What’s the matter, what’s the matter?” _

 

“Help me,” Otabek says. He tosses his arm out towards Yuri, and Yuri rolls his eyes even as he hauls Otabek to his feet. JJ rolls onto his stomach and crawls into the living room, mumbling to himself and singing. They watch him until he drops himself by the couch, and then Yuri goes into the bathroom. 

 

“I can’t do anything,” JJ says, and suddenly he only sounds tired.

 

“What do you mean?” Otabek asks, pulling JJ off the floor and depositing him onto the couch.

 

Yuri comes back into the room, and he brings three water bottles from the kitchen. He thrusts one at JJ and leaves the other two on the coffee table. JJ proceeds to twist the top off the bottle and dump the water over his head. “Are you fucking kidding,” Yuri growls, snatching it away from him.

 

“Everything’s all...” JJ mumbles, and then he reaches out for Otabek. “Come here, come here. Otabek. Otabek, do you remember when I met her?”

 

“You don’t have to stay,” Otabek whispers to Yuri. “I think he just wants to talk.”

 

“Shouldn’t we put him to bed or something?” Yuri says.

 

They both look at JJ, soaking wet and sitting on the couch, reaching for Otabek and looking miserable. Otabek sighs. “I think he needs to let his feelings out. This might be the only way. I’m going to talk with him, but you don’t need to stay if you don’t want to.”

 

“Oooooootabek,” JJ slurs. “Do you remember?”

 

“Do you want me to leave?” Yuri asks.

 

“Not particularly.”

 

“Then I’m staying.”

 

“Otaaaaaaabek.”

 

“I remember,” Otabek finally answers, turning his attention to JJ. He sits down on the couch beside him, and Yuri perches on the edge of the coffee table. “She had braces. You almost walked into a stop sign.”

 

Yuri snorts quietly, and JJ smiles. His face falters though, and he’s frowning before Yuri can even tell if he really smiled at all. He mumbles, “I thought she was the prettiest girl in the world. And she keeps getting prettier every time I look at her, you know?”

 

Otabek can’t help it that his gaze slides to Yuri. “I know,” he says.

 

“She’s my best friend in the whole world,” JJ slurs. “And it makes me feel so fucking shitty.”

 

There’s a pause. Otabek tries desperately to formulate a response, but Yuri beats him to it. “What the fuck?”

 

JJ leans over and drops his head onto Otabek’s shoulder. “I’m a fraud, you know?”

 

“I don’t know,” Otabek answers softly. “What makes you think that?”

 

“I’m not a real person!” The conviction in JJ’s voice is surprising, and his eyes are wet. Yuri stares, completely unnerved. “I’ve become a professional athlete only to make my parents proud of me? It’s been my whole life longer than I even remember, and I don’t even know if I care about it. I want to win because when I win, I know exactly how my family feels about me. Who am I, if not... What am I good at, if I stop skating? So I never stopped, and I never thought about stopping, and if I wasn’t thrilled it didn’t matter because  _ they were.  _ But I can’t do it forever. And then what? But like, what if that’s not it? What if everything I’ve got now, I only have because people want me to have it, and now I’m too used to it to let it go.”

 

“JJ,” Otabek says, his brow furrowed. “What—”

 

“I’m not in love with Bells.”

 

The silence that falls over the three of them feels almost violent. For as long as Yuri can think back in time, as long as he’s known of JJ’s existence, it’s always been JJ and Isabella. 

 

“I used to be,” JJ continues. “And I still love her with my whole heart. She’s my best friend. She’s perfect. I want her to be so happy, the happiest. But I’m not in love with her anymore. I don’t know how or why. I wanted to marry her, to be with her until we died, but it was never a good time. There was always skating, and then she went to university, and then my mom got sick, and then her dad died, and I was always travelling and then... We just never got around to it. And I think back to how I used to feel, you know? I wanted to give her the whole entire world. But now... Now it’s like. I want her to have the whole world, but I don’t really... It doesn’t have to be me that gives it to her, you know? It just feels like. Like I’m staying because I don’t know who I am if I’m not her partner. Just like I don’t know who I am if I’m not skating. It’s the same fucking thing.”

 

JJ sucks in a gasp of air, and when he exhales it comes out as almost a sob. “How do I stop living like this without losing everything?” 

 

“Your family will still love you if you stop skating,” Otabek insists firmly, his arm snaking around JJ’s shoulder.

 

“But not as much,” JJ says. “Like, look. They always loved Arthur. But they loved him  _ more  _ after he started showing an aptitude for skating. They’ll still love me if I stop but it’ll be... less. And Bells. I can’t lose her. She’s my best friend. I can’t go back home and have her not be there. But I can’t marry her. She deserves to marry someone who is irrefutably in love with her. She deserves the best of everything and I can’t... I’m not... But if I break up with her she’ll... Otabek, I can’t. She’s my best friend, she’s my  _ only—” _

 

Helplessness washes over Otabek. He remembers when he left Montréal. All the Leroys had gone to the airport to see him off, and JJ had said  _ we’ll keep in touch, yeah?  _ and Otabek had said  _ of course _ but. Life got busy. Being back in Almaty with his family and his childhood friends had taken up a lot of his time and energy, and then there was Yuri, and then he only ever saw JJ at competitions and only texted him over birthdays and holidays. In his mind, he and JJ were never very close. They cohabitated for a year and shared a rink for two so they were close in proximity, but to Otabek they had only ever been friends  _ because  _ they had been physically very close. He likes JJ well enough, and they get along when JJ’s not running his mouth, but he was never friends with JJ the way he is with Sezim and Serik, and even now with Yuuri and Mila. 

 

But he looks back on it, and his chest constricts because the only people JJ ever had around him were his family and Isabella, and for two years, Otabek.

 

And Otabek left him.

 

_ “Tabernac,”  _ JJ laughs, and it sounds wet and hoarse. He wipes his face and rubs his throat. “I’m so drunk.” Otabek’s arm tightens around JJ’s shoulder, but JJ shrugs him off. He stands and stumbles off to the bathroom, and through the closed door, they can hear him sing.  _ “Oh, why you gotta be so talkative? I talk too much, I talk too much.” _

 

“Yura,” Otabek murmurs, and Yuri moves from where he’s perched and grabs Otabek by the hand, hauling him up. 

 

He drags his fingers through Otabek’s hair and kisses all over his face, his lips lingering over Otabek’s brow and then the bridge of his nose. Otabek tugs him closer by a finger hooked into one of his belt loops, and he makes a wounded sound when Yuri wraps him up tight in a hug. “I guess we have to be his friends for real now, don’t we?” Yuri asks quietly.

 

“I can’t even imagine how lonely it must feel.”

 

“Promise me,” Yuri whispers, suddenly upset. “Promise me that won’t happen to us.”

 

“I promise. I promise.”

 

♔♔♔

 

The morning comes quietly. JJ is awake when Otabek emerges from the bedroom, and still awake an hour later when Yuri shows his face. The three of them eat breakfast together quietly, and then because Otabek likes everything to be out on the table as much as possible, he asks, “What do you remember from last night?”

 

JJ drops his piece of toast onto his plate as if it’s offended him. He says, “Look. Why don’t we all just pretend that last night never happened?”

 

Yuri snorts, then takes a big gulp of coffee before saying, “Maybe because you can’t travel to a different country, get drunk off your ass, go on a really depressing rant, and then expect everyone to pretend that everything’s normal.”

 

“Yuri,” Otabek mutters, but Yuri just stares at JJ.

 

JJ sighs. “Look. I was just toasted last night. Everything’s fine. I just needed a break from everything for a little while. I’m stressed, but it’s  _ fine. _ ”

 

“Bullshit,” Yuri insists. “If everything was fine, you wouldn’t even be here!”

 

JJ laughs. It sounds like glass breaking. He rubs at his throat before answering. “I just figured that I’d take this opportunity to visit my frien—” His voice breaks, and he can’t look at either of them.

 

Otabek reaches across the space between them and drops a heavy hand on JJ’s shoulder. “Don’t you want to rest?”

 

Nobody breathes. A few long moments pass, and then JJ drops his head far enough down that his chin is pushed into his clavicle. “What do you want from me?” he asks. His voice is quiet, and it cracks in the middle, and he sounds so lost. So young. Yuri’s jaw tightens. He doesn’t want to feel bad for JJ, but he can’t help it.

 

“I want you to do what you need to to survive this,” Otabek answers. “And I’m telling you that this is a safe place for you. Okay?”

 

JJ manages to nod. He reaches up and squeezes Otabek’s forearm, and when he has to wipe tears from his eyes, he laughs. “I’m so hung over, holy fuck.”

 

♔♔♔

 

They’re not usually into a lot of PDA, but Otabek has been feeling off-balance since JJ showed up. He keeps his fingers intertwined with Yuri’s as they roam through the grocery store, and whenever they stop in an aisle to compare prices, he leans his weight against Yuri’s back and presses his nose into Yuri’s shoulder.

 

“You’re out of yoghurt,” Yuri tells him as they walk through the dairy section.

 

“Okay.”

 

“So, hey,” Yuri says, and he squeezes Otabek’s fingers as he picks up a can of tuna.

 

“Hmm?”

 

“What do you think he should do?”

 

“JJ?”

 

“Yeah.” Yuri puts down the tuna and picks up a can from a different brand. “You think he should leave her?”

 

Otabek just thinks for a moment, his lips pressed into a hard line. He remembers when JJ and Isabella first started dating, back when JJ was just about to turn sixteen. They were shy and adorable and so, so young. JJ had talked about her incessantly, and Otabek had tuned out a lot of the chatter. He had figured that nobody you dated as a kid stayed with you, and that JJ would have a harder time of it than most due to all the travelling he did for skating and the fact that he was being homeschooled. And yet, here they all are, ten years later. “I think he probably shouldn’t marry her if he’s not certain, but I can see why he’d be scared to end the relationship.”

 

Yuri tosses the tuna into the basket he’s carrying and tugs Otabek back through to the dairy aisle. He grabs two cartons of yoghurt, a litre of milk, and a brick of cheese. Then he picks the cheese back up and studies it. “Do you want Chyorny or Moskovsky?” When Otabek shrugs Yuri jabs him in the ribs with an elbow, then drops the cheese back in the basket. “Whatever. Well, I think he should leave her. And retire. What’s the point of doing anything if it makes you feel shitty more often than it makes you happy?”

 

“Not everyone can be brave like you,” Otabek murmurs, and Yuri blinks at him in surprise. “Even if you’re right.”

 

“God, you’re such a sap,” Yuri mutters, but he kisses Otabek softly and they linger there like that for a moment until an old man pushes a cart by them and clears his throat loudly. As soon as he’s got his back to them, Yuri flashes his middle finger and scowls, and Otabek laughs.

 

“When you only have one person in the whole world who you believe is unconditionally on your side, wouldn’t you think changing that relationship would be difficult?”

 

“Sure,” Yuri agrees as he leads Otabek towards the bakery section. “Except that she doesn’t care for him truly unconditionally if she would stop supporting him if he breaks off the engagement. Right?”

 

Otabek hums softly. “Maybe, but she loves him. It would hurt her to let him go.”

 

Yuri snorts. “That isn’t the point, though.”

 

“But he isn’t going to want to hurt her.”

 

“Okay, but.” Yuri selects a loaf of bread and tosses it in the basket. “Do you need eggs?”

 

“I don’t think so.”

 

“Okay. But like. Wouldn’t hurting her a little now be better than marrying her and then having the relationship fall apart later because he’s a fucking coward? Like. They’re not gonna last and be satisfied if he marries her even though he’s got doubts.”

 

“I think you’re making this out to be a little more black and white than it is,” Otabek says. “Don’t let me forget that I’m low on mouthwash.”

 

“But it is black and white,” Yuri insists. He squeezes Otabek’s hand tightly again, then turns and drags him off towards the toiletries section. “If you’re not happy, you do something to change it. I mean,  _ you  _ did. You wanted to be with me, so you moved here to get what you wanted. If JJ wants to stop skating, he should. And if he wants Isabella to marry someone who loves her better than he does, he should leave her and let her do that. It’s just that simple.” He grabs a bottle of mouthwash, toothpaste, and floss. His hand lingers over a bottle of shampoo before ultimately not picking it up. “Anything else?”

 

“Granola?”

 

“I picked some up the other day.”

 

“Did you want more of that tea Yuuri bought for you?”

 

“I brought the last of it over from Lilia’s, so I’m okay for a little while.”

 

“Alright.” They make their way to the checkout, and Otabek scans the groceries in his mind and tries to figure out if he’s got enough money or if he’ll need to put it on credit. “Aren’t you scared to quit skating though? You’ve never done anything else. Can’t you see why he’d be afraid?”

 

Yuri snorts. “Don’t try to compare us. I love it. Even when I stop, I won’t stop, you know? It’s stupid to be afraid of quitting something you don’t even care for.”

 

“But his family—”

 

“He can’t be a momma’s boy forever,” Yuri sneers as he starts loading everything onto the conveyor belt. “He’s going to have to learn how to be his own person. Why should he draw that out when he has the perfect opportunity now?”

 

Yuri has always been fiery and fearless. Whenever anything scares him, his first reaction is to try to beat it into submission. That instinct has always been something that Otabek’s admired about him, but sometimes it makes him unsympathetic towards others. But JJ has always struggled with fear. He has worshipped his father, and his brother has worshipped him, and he has spent his whole childhood and adolescence preparing to lead the life that he’s living right now. Otabek can’t find it in himself to blame JJ for not knowing what to do. 

 

The cashier scans everything through and Yuri bags it all up. When she tells them the price, Yuri whips out his wallet and passes over a small wad of bills.

 

“Yura, no,” Otabek mutters, scrambling to grab his credit card and shove it into the cashier’s hands.

 

“Fuck off, I’m going to eat most of this shit anyway.”

 

“It doesn’t matter, it’s still—”

 

“Don’t put it on your damn credit card when I’ve got cash, holy shit.”

 

They snipe uselessly at each other, Otabek still holding his credit card out, as the cashier takes Yuri’s rubles and pulls change out from the till. Yuri swipes Otabek’s credit card and shoves it into the pocket of his hoodie, then he grabs a bag off the belt, leaving the other two for Otabek. They catch the bus and ride it back to Otabek’s neighbourhood quietly, until Otabek murmurs, “If it were you, I don’t know that I’d want you to leave. He still adores her. Couldn’t that be enough?”

 

Yuri stares at him, eyes wide. “Hey.” With his free hand, he reaches up and pushes a lock of Otabek’s hair off his forehead, then curls his fingers tightly into the collar of Otabek’s jacket. “That’ll never be us. I’d never stop loving you.”

 

“That’s what JJ thought, too.”

 

“We’re not them,” Yuri eventually settles on. “You promised.”

 

Sometimes Otabek feels like they can’t ever be close enough. Like if he could, he’d be happiest to just sink into Yuri’s skin and evaporate, become a part of him so deeply that you could never get them apart again. He’s breathless with the weight of it, so damn in love that he doesn’t know what to do. He’s got a bag of groceries braced between his feet on the floor of the bus, and another bag on the seat beside him, and he grabs Yuri by the back of the neck and drags him into a kiss that’s fierce, possessive, tender. “Promise me back,” he whispers, his mouth still mostly pressed to Yuri’s.

 

“Don’t you know?” Yuri murmurs, looking into his eyes, more serious than Otabek’s seen him about almost anything. “The second I got you, I knew I wasn’t gonna let you go. You’re mine. I’m yours. That’s just how it is.”

 

Otabek’s lips twitch. “That’s just how it is, hm?”

 

Finally, Yuri grins. 

 

♔♔♔

 

They’re walking up around the back of the apartment building when they hear it, and Otabek stops on the paved path to crane his neck and look up. Yuri squints. “I kind of forgot you had a balcony.”

 

Otabek’s apartment is on the fourth floor. They can’t see JJ from where they’re standing too close to the side of the building, but they can hear his voice. The patio door is at least open, if he isn’t actually out on the balcony.  _ “Well come on over, you’ll regret it. Crack you up if you let it. Hang on only ‘til you get it; the wait goes on and on.” _

 

“Has he always done this?” Yuri asks, looking at Otabek.

 

Otabek pauses, then says, “He’s gotten better. He used to have a hard time singing and handling the guitar together. He sounds really good now.”

 

It’s true. He sounds  _ really  _ good. It makes Yuri angry; he’s an asshole who shouldn’t be good at things. And yet.

 

_ “And I know you know that I ain’t me, so. Us remains impossible. Yeah, us remains impossible.” _

 

Once it’s obvious that he’s switched to a different song, Otabek starts back up walking, and Yuri stays listening for another moment before hurrying to catch up. When they get all the way upstairs, JJ has put the guitar down but he’s still singing. He sounds like he’s struggling to breathe, and he’s sitting outside, on his ass on the ground with his back against the sliding door.  _ “Well I grew up just around here, and I took a few just around here, and I’d wake up every day with poison in my head behind exactly the same face.” _

 

Otabek drops the groceries in the kitchen and hurries to pull JJ into the house. “JJ, hey. Hey, look at me.”

 

JJ’s face is wet, and his eyes are glassy.  _ “Tell me, will I dream? And tell me, will it be serene? Or tell me, will I stay with my feet in exactly the same place?” _

 

Otabek sort of shakes him, and then hauls him over to the couch. “It’s too cold for you to be outside without at least a sweater,” he mutters, and Yuri can hear an edge of panic in his voice. “Yura, the door.”

 

Yuri slams the balcony door closed and clicks the lock. He watches Otabek in the reflection of the glass because he’s a little afraid to turn around.  _ “Hold me like you’ll never let me go. Bear it like you’d never let it show.”  _

 

Otabek grabs the blanket JJ’s been sleeping with off the floor and wraps JJ up tightly in it. “Stop,” he snaps, pulling JJ into his arms. Yuri bites down hard on the inside of his cheek. “You’re freaking out, and you’re freaking me out. Stop it. Breathe. JJ.” JJ makes a sound that Yuri can’t classify as a sob or as a scream but makes him think of both, and then Otabek is rocking him, his face pressed against the top of JJ’s head. “Shh. It’s okay. You’re fine. You’re fine. JJ, hush.”

 

And then, just as quickly as it had started, it stops. JJ falls silent, and after a few more moments of laying in Otabek’s arms, he squirms. Otabek hesitantly lets him go, and he drags himself to his feet. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he rasps as he moves past Yuri, heading to the bathroom. He doesn’t look at either of them.

 

“Beka?” Yuri finally turns to Otabek, and Otabek looks... he’s never seen Otabek look like this before. Upset and stressed and so, so helpless. His hands are in his lap, his shoulders are slumped, and his face is drawn. “What the fuck was that?”

 

“I... don’t know.”

 

“What do we do?”

 

Otabek reaches out, and Yuri goes to him because he can’t not. He curls up with his face pressed into the side of Otabek’s neck and his hands under Otabek’s shirt, pressed into his stomach. Otabek holds him nearly too tightly, and murmurs, “I don’t know,” and they just sit there in the silence.

 

♔♔♔

 

“Can I go to the rink with you tomorrow?”

 

It’s nearly two in the morning. Yuri had gotten up to go to the bathroom, and as he was heading back to the bedroom, JJ stood up from the couch and cornered him against the wall. “Um. Why aren’t you asleep, asshole?”

 

It’s too dark to make out the expression on JJ’s face, but he’s standing too close for comfort. There’s something about the quietness of the room, and the cocoon of the black night around them that makes the moment feel far too intimate. Yuri can hear JJ’s breath catch in his throat over and over, and when he whispers, “I need to skate,” he’s both ignoring and answering the question.

 

“I’m going in four hours. If you’re not ready, I’m leaving you behind.”

 

JJ nods, and finally, he steps back. There’s less than a metre between them, but it feels like they’re separated by whole universes. “Night, Plisetsky,” JJ murmurs before retreating back to the couch. He doesn’t lie down. Instead, he flicks on the TV. The volume’s so low down it might actually be muted, and the light flickers across JJ’s face, casting shadows under his eyes and turning his skin pallid and tinged with blue.

 

Yuri doesn’t run back down the hall, but it’s a near thing. He catapults himself onto the bed, and he jostles Otabek as he gets under the covers. Otabek groans and presses his face into the pillow when Yuri scratches at the buzz of the undercut by his ear. “Come to the rink later,” Yuri whispers.

 

Otabek pulls the pillow over his head and tries to shake Yuri’s fingers away. He makes a grumpy, sleepy noise before whining, “Why?”

 

“Because I don’t want to go alone with Jean-Jackoff.”

 

The pillow gets pushed to the floor, and Otabek looks at Yuri with surprise. “He wants to go to the rink?”

 

“Come with us,” Yuri says, pulling the comforter up over his shoulders. “I don’t know what to do with him. And Yakov’s gonna freak. Just... buffer him, okay?”

 

Otabek turns his head and stares at the bedroom door, as if he can see into the living room through it. As if seeing JJ will help them understand what’s going on with him better. “Okay,” he agrees after a moment. “But let me sleep a little first.”

 

Yuri tucks Otabek back in beside him and sighs. Neither of them is tired anymore.

 

They lie awake, watching the black outside the window become a dark blue, then a dim grey.

 

♔♔♔

 

It’s like the rink freezes around them when JJ steps up to the boards. Yuri is tense, but he skates out onto the ice anyway and fends everyone off with a terrifying scowl. JJ, though, just stands at the side, his skate guards off and ready to go, but trapped under the collective gaze of a rink full of Russians. “Go on,” Otabek says to him quietly, only loud enough for JJ to hear. “They won’t even talk to you; just go out there and warm up. It’s okay.”

 

“They won’t talk to me,” JJ agrees, eyes tracking Yuri but catching on the others. “They’re too busy whispering about me.”

 

“You can’t blame them for being curious.”

 

JJ purses his lips, but takes a deep breath. “Are you coming?”

 

Otabek squeezes his shoulder. “I’m just going to watch for a bit, but I’ll be out there soon enough. Don’t worry. I’ll be right behind you.”

 

When they look at each other, it feels like they’ve been sucked back in time. Otabek is fifteen again, standing in line at a Tim Horton’s in Montréal. He doesn’t know any French, and his host family has spent all their time fighting and no time at all helping Otabek adjust. All he wants is a hot chocolate. The line is moving quickly, and he has no idea how he’s going to order. He thought Canada was an English speaking country, and predominantly it is, but not  _ here.  _ Not in Québec. His nostrils flare with panic as he steps up to the counter, but before he can even stutter anything out, JJ is right there. Right behind him. “You don’t drink coffee, right? You want a hot chocolate?”

 

Otabek nods and JJ had pats his shoulder and orders around him. Otabek passes JJ a toonie, and JJ says, “Don’t freak out when you try to talk, okay? I’ll be right behind you.”

 

Now they’re twenty-five, and they look at each other. Otabek doesn’t know what’s going on in JJ’s head, the time between when they were close and right now feeling like lifetimes, but. JJ’s eyes are the same. Blue, and earnest, and somehow shuttered. “You have Bluetooth earbuds, yeah? I want you to listen to the music for my short program.”

 

“Okay.”

 

JJ steps out onto the ice, and his body is open and confident. Otabek knows that no one can tell that he’s nervous. And he skates the way he always does, except—

 

“This choreography isn’t like him at  _ all,” _ Yuri says, suddenly right there. 

 

Otabek passes him one of his ear buds. “Neither is this song.”

 

They watch him together, and Otabek’s chest aches. The song is tender but forceful, the vocals caught somewhere between a cry of elation and a shout of defiance. It’s melancholy but also... firm. Daring. JJ moves and Otabek recognises the jumps and the footwork, but the composition is utterly foreign to him. Like somebody took all the pieces of JJ and rearranged them. It’s raw and vulnerable in a way that he’s never seen from JJ on the ice before. If JJ had been skating like this from the very beginning, the trajectory of his career might have been different. 

 

The others are whispering around them, JJ was right about that. The juniors that Victor and Yuuri are coaching have all stopped to watch and murmur amongst themselves, and Mila and Yakov are watching from the boards with hawks’ gazes. When JJ strikes his ending pose, the others all go back quickly to what they were doing before, not willing to be caught staring. JJ just stands in the middle of the rink, his face blank and empty, before he turns towards Otabek and Yuri and halfheartedly flashes his signature JJ hand sign. From somewhere to the left there’s the flash of a camera, and then JJ laughs, tossing his head back and letting the sound swell around him. 

 

Whoever it is that has been hiding out on Otabek’s couch for the past four days has composed a beautiful, heartfelt routine. Whoever that person is evaporates as soon as that camera comes out. Now, out there where everyone can see, is just the armour that JJ’s worn for as long as Otabek has known him. He wonders if JJ knows that Otabek can see through him, that Yuri can also see through him now. He wonders, just for a second, what would happen if the rest of the world could see through JJ, too.

 

♔♔♔

 

The whole day there have been very few words spoken between them, and that doesn’t change over dinner. Yuri has been alternating between watching JJ almost too carefully and ignoring him in favour of mothering Otabek. JJ finishes eating and clears his plate from the table, swiping Yuri’s as well as he heads for the kitchen. Otabek pushes his stroganoff around his plate.

 

“You need to eat,” Yuri murmurs into his ear, and Otabek leans against him before shovelling a forkful into his mouth and quirking his brow a little. Yuri sticks out his tongue, then kisses Otabek’s brow where it’s always a little furrowed. “Thank you.”

 

There’s a soft sound behind them, and when Yuri turns JJ is standing in the threshold between the kitchen and the living room, his bare foot dragging back and forth slightly over the laminate floor. He watches them for a long time, and Yuri watches him back, and Otabek stares off into the middle distance as if maybe if he wills it enough, he could be somewhere else. When JJ eventually speaks, his voice is soft and tired. “I’ve booked a flight. I need to be at the airport at four.”

 

The sound Otabek makes is incredulous before he catches and stifles it. “In the morning? Ten hours from now?”

 

JJ nods. His hand is around his throat and his whole face is drawn into a frown. “It’s time I get back home. I can’t run away forever.”

 

“But if you’re not ready to—,” Otabek tries, but JJ stops him with the flap of his hand, the one that he isn’t currently using to strangle himself.

 

“I know what I need to do now. It’s okay.”

 

Sometimes when JJ looks at Otabek, his eyes go bright and piercing. His gaze lingers a little too long for Yuri’s taste, and it’s fond and demanding and sad all at once. And Otabek always just holds his gaze until he’s finished looking. JJ always looks away first. Now, his eyes flit up towards the ceiling. His fingers twitch, his pinkie visibly digging into his collarbone, and then his hand falls to his side. He looks like a puppet with his strings cut. Otabek won’t ask, Yuri knows, so he asks instead. “What are you going to do?”

 

The breath JJ pulls in is long and measured. “I need to hammer out a free skate.”

 

Yuri can feel Otabek’s whole body tense up. He beats Otabek to the punch. “Are you fucking serious? After everything, after how fucking miserable you’ve made it clear that you are, you—”

 

“It’s who I am,” JJ insists. “It’s who I’ve been primed to be. It was stupid of me to think I could be anything else. I’m a skater. I’m a  _ Leroy.  _ I’m going to skate. I’m going to marry my high school sweetheart. I’m going to be the man that everybody thinks I am.”

 

“But you’re not that person,” Otabek says suddenly, standing. 

 

_ “Yes I am!”  _ JJ shouts, the first time Yuri’s seen him be anything other than sad or pretending not be since he showed up. “I’m everything they say I am, okay? I’m the fucking king, I’m the next rung of my family’s legacy, I’m talented and relentless and cocky as hell. I’m a diva, I’m a good son, and I’m in love with Isabella Yang. I’m  _ happy,  _ and you don’t get to tell me I’m not!” He covers his eyes with his hand, and he angles his body away from them, and he shakes.

 

He sure as fuck doesn’t look happy to Yuri.

 

“You don’t have to do this,” Otabek rasps. “You can be whoever you want to be. You’re an adult, you can control this, you don’t have to do what everyone wants you to do.”

 

“Don’t you get it?” JJ still won’t look at them. “I want to be that guy. I want it so bad, Otabek. I want to make it real.”

 

“And what if you can’t?”

 

Finally, JJ looks at Otabek. It’s like Yuri’s not even in the room anymore, even though at some point he had reached out and snagged Otabek by the hand. He’s squeezing so tightly his knuckles are white with pressure. “I will.”

 

JJ never truly unpacked his bag. If Yuri had been paying attention, he would have noticed that the duffle had at some point over the course of the evening made it’s way from under the coffee table over to sit near the front door. The guitar is packed in its case and leaning against the wall in the hallway. The blanket has been folded away. The silence that surrounds them now is heavy and thick, like the silence that follows a bomb going off. As if it’s only quiet because your ears are ringing too loudly to hear anything at all. JJ is... determined, that's for sure. And apparently him not knowing when to give up is really part of who he is and not just a trait that people tell him he has. But Yuri looks at him, and looks at the graveness of Otabek’s face, and he knows that if JJ goes through with this, it won't work.

 

He doesn't know when it will happen, or what it will look like, but Yuri knows that the fallout will be bad. 

 

♔♔♔

 

They don't sleep. They go to bed around midnight because JJ had insisted that he'd get an Uber and go to the airport alone, and other than that they hadn't spoken since the argument after dinner. So Yuri and Otabek had gone to bed.

 

The TV is on in the other room. It's late enough, or early enough, that the only thing on are infomercials that JJ can't even understand because they're in Russian, selling things like waist trainers and pantyhose that won't run and kitchenware. Otabek has been tossing and turning for hours, and Yuri stared at the screen of his phone until his eyes went blurry, and then did it again after he blinked the burning sensation away. 

 

Otabek doesn't want to let JJ go. How can he sit back and watch as someone he knows purposefully locks himself into a gilded cage? But JJ was right; who is he to tell JJ what to do or how to feel? Years ago, when they were young and impressionable and everything around them was still wide open and full of choices, maybe Otabek could have changed something. If he had kept in touch like he promised, if he had been there for JJ when the world started feeling too heavy, maybe this wouldn't be happening. Maybe JJ wouldn't have backed himself into a corner he's too afraid to escape from. But Otabek had kept JJ at arm’s length, and then he had left and never looked back, and now he’ll never know. Now, it doesn't seem to matter. 

 

An alarm goes off at three o’clock, and Yuri rubs his eyes as he sits up. Otabek is already moving out to the hall, where JJ is putting on a track jacket and tapping away at his phone. The three of them stand in an awkward huddle by the front door, all averting eye contact and not really saying anything.

 

Eventually, JJ says, “Thanks for having me,” and Yuri makes a gruff noise in response.

 

In a move not typical of Otabek, he hauls JJ in for a tight hug. JJ’s breath catches in his throat, and his hand comes up to clutch at the back of Otabek’s t-shirt. “Why did you come here?” Otabek asks, desperate. “What did you hope you would find?”

 

JJ laughs, and it's the saddest thing Otabek may have ever heard. “I wanted to be like you. Strong, brave, myself. But even when we were kids I couldn't keep up with you. Nothing’s changed much, has it?”

 

Yuri makes another noise, low and wounded, and then there’s a large hand cupping Otabek’s chin and the lower half of his cheek. He's looking up into JJ’s eyes, bluer than Yuri’s but just as clear, and time slows to a crawl.

 

He's aware of Yuri at his back, aware of the slow pounding of his heart in his chest, of a shared history between him and JJ rife with unsaid words and jealous rivalry tempered with too much friendliness to be resentful. The weight of guilt and missed opportunities between them seems to draw them together, and suddenly JJ is kissing him.

 

It feels like a lifetime passes between the moment their lips touch and the moment they part from each other, and then JJ is leaning his forehead against Otabek’s. “Gimme some of your good luck, Golden Boy,” JJ whispers, his eyes wide and searching. “Tell me everything’s gonna be okay.”

 

♔♔♔

 

Yuri knows what's going to happen as soon as Otabek asks the question that has been on their minds since the beginning. The truth he had been afraid of, but now feels resigned to stares him in the face as JJ tilts Otabek’s head and kisses him. Yuri wants to snag Otabek out of his hands, but it's over before he can even reach out. And it's not... it's not what Yuri had been scared of.

 

JJ had come to Saint Petersburg looking for a reason to not need to turn around. He had come searching for answers in Otabek, the only person in the world outside of the people he's breaking under who ever saw him for what he was. And he got here, and found Otabek, and it only took him less than a week to know that Otabek wouldn't have the answers. Couldn't. That Otabek wouldn't be the reason or the motivation for him to walk away from the life that is crushing him. And JJ’s right; he will never be on the same level as Otabek, not as long as he allows himself to be dictated by his fear.

 

And Yuri feels safe, because he knows JJ knows. JJ can't draw Otabek away from him, can't offer him anything better than what he already has. JJ knows it so well that the kiss isn't even him trying.

 

Yuri doesn't know how he knows, but he knows. The kiss is a goodbye. It's closing a door. It's letting go.

 

“Tell me everything’s gonna be okay,” JJ whispers, and Yuri reaches out and wraps his fingers around Otabek’s hand. Otabek squeezes.

 

“You'll figure it out,” Otabek tells JJ softly, slowly moving back towards Yuri. “You're good at getting back up. You'll be okay.”

 

“Please don't stop believing in me,” JJ begs, his face trying to twist into a smile but splintering into a grimace instead. 

 

“Fuck, you're so stupid,” Yuri snarls, drawing Otabek fully against his side. “We’re your friends, dickhead. We’re on your side.”

 

Otabek stares at him, his eyes wide with awe and maybe a little adoration. JJ stares at him too, and when his lips curl this time, it's honest in its relief. The buzz of his phone is loud and sudden, and then JJ says, “I gotta go.” He doesn't wait for anyone to say goodbye, he just grabs his things and is gone.

 

Otabek locks the door and bustles Yuri back into the bedroom, then tips him down onto the bed and covers Yuri’s body with his own. “You always find a way to surprise me,” he murmurs into Yuri’s skin. “I can't believe you're not upset.”

 

Yuri drags his fingers through Otabek’s hair, then kisses him soundly. “I told you,” he whispers. “You're mine. I'm yours. That's how it is.”

 

“Yeah,” Otabek agrees quietly, eyes closed. “We promised.”

 

♔♔♔

 

When they wake up the sun is high, and the whole room is lit up with it. Otabek has managed to hide his face under the tangled mess that is Yuri’s hair, and Yuri has an arm thrown over his face to try to block out the light, but he can’t ignore the birdsong that accompanies it. His throat is dry, and his tongue feels thick and fuzzy in his mouth. He groans.

 

Otabek’s hands are warm on the skin of his thighs. He’s wrapped around Yuri’s back and pressed flush against him, and it’s mornings like this that Yuri lives for. If only he weren’t so fucking exhausted. He doesn’t want to get up. He reaches over his head and back, curling his fingers into Otabek’s hair, and twists to press his face into the pillow. He’s just about to fall back to sleep, and then his brain flashes back. He sits up abruptly and presses the heels of his palms hard into his eyes.

 

“Was JJ here?” he asks gruffly, his voice thick with sleep.

 

Otabek snags Yuri by a fistful of his hair and gently tugs him back down. “Yeah.”

 

“Is he gone?”

 

“Yeah,” he mumbles again, manhandling Yuri until he’s sprawled out on his back. Otabek then lays his head down on Yuri’s chest. “Call Yakov. Tell him you can’t come in today.”

 

Yuri brushes his fingers slowly up Otabek’s spine over his t-shirt, then down, then under the cotton and over bare skin. “Why?”

 

Otabek looks up at him. His eyes are so dark, so warm, that Yuri wants to melt into them. He shivers when Otabek brushes a kiss against the underside of his jaw. And shivers harder when Otabek whispers against his skin, “I just want you with me today. Please.”

 

How could he say no to that? “Okay. Are you okay?”

 

“I will be. I love you.”

 

If Yuri could draw Otabek closer, he would. As it is, he just tangles their legs together and presses his whole hand into the middle of Otabek’s back. Otabek drifts back off to sleep like that, and Yuri reaches over to the bedside table to grab his phone. The first post he sees on Instagram is a picture that JJ snapped of the view from his window on the plane. The sky is blue and vast, and there are clouds beneath him. He usually inundates his own posts with stupid captions and excessive, juvenile hashtags, but this one only has #goinghome on it. Yuri can’t bring himself to like it, but he does manage to grab Otabek’s phone from under his pillow. Otabek doesn’t keep a password on his phone, so Yuri goes straight into his contacts and finds JJ. The message he sends is concise.

 

_ This is Plisetsky. Txt when you get home. Youve got friends now so dont be a dick about it. _

 

After that’s done, he shoots a text off to Yakov from his own phone and then shoves both phones into the drawer of the nightstand. All he wants now is to follow Otabek back into sleep. Maybe go for food when they wake up. Maybe not let Otabek out of arm’s reach until at least tomorrow. 

**Author's Note:**

> In case any of you are interested, the songs JJ sings, in order of appearance, are:
> 
> The Ballad of Me and My Brain by The 1975  
> Best Places to Be a Mom by Taking Back Sunday  
> Get Hurt by The Gaslight Anthem  
> Isabella by Dia Frampton  
> Talk Too Much by COIN  
> Us Remains Impossible by Matthew Good  
> Empty's Theme Park by Matthew Good
> 
> The song JJ uses for his Short Program is:
> 
> Hope by Dia Frampton 
> 
> The title is inspired by the song Wonder by The Classic Crime, and I had wanted to incorporate Desperation by Judith Hill as well but couldn't manage to fit it in, so you guys should listen to those songs too.


End file.
